Teresa

We as people often notice people whom we are critcal of for different reasons.

Perhaps they don't look like someone we want to be seen with or maybe we don't appreciate their actions or what they wear.

Sometimes we look at their surroundings and think it's the company they keep, or they made bad decisions so they are reaping what they've sowed.

Whatever the case may be, we do pass judgement.

Of what purpose does it serve?

More often than not, we have no idea what that person has suffered, we don't know their hurt's or their sorrow's.

We don't know the causes, and better yet, we don't need to.

Perhaps this person has never known love of family, maybe they grew up without family.

Maybe they were abused, neglected or raised in a home by parents who were taken advantage of.

What if they were passed from foster homes one after the other always waiting to see what happens to them next....

But what if we smiled at them with acceptance?Maybe we could lift a sorrowful heart with a kind word.

A little bit of loving kindness could make the difference between despair in a heart or a glimpse of hope in a heart.

It doesn't take much from us to give an honorable glimpse at another, after all that satisfies ourselves too.

Being more thoughtful of another by realizing they have feelings and needs like anyone else is common courtesy, let alone if we made an effort to give of ourselves because they matter too.

Maybe if we practice thinking instead of what or who they are, why they are as we see them, especially when we have no idea about this person's life, or try thinking of something to lift up a person, giving them the dignity that "you yourself" deserve.

Instead of taking time and thought to judge them, put thought to a healing word to say to them or pray that they find confort and care for their hurts and needs.

Remember too, sometimes we say things that crush the little bit of hope a person may be clinging to because we've passed judgement of another as "we see it."

Don't think because you are strong, or affluent, or overcame extreme hardship, endured pain or suffering that others have no excuse to be hurting, or poor, addicted or homeless, and mostly, thinking or saying things like "they brought it on themselves" or "they deserve it."

The list is as long as the judgements, the mindset of others, the selfishness of cruelty, the stresses, suffering, and the hardship of other's whom find relief in shedding it off on another.

If we practice not thinking of others through our own eyes, through our own thinking and regardless of our opinion's, practice the knowledge that everybody deserves to be cared about, loved, treated with kindness, amd knowing that compassion a human capacity and not a gift to give to the people we think deserve it.

I truly believe what we share in compassion could heal the world, because that takes Love.